A beautiful weekend in Yorkshire probing the muddy delights of the Easegill system. Torrential rain on Saturday didn't massively flood the caves, a beautiful bright and icy day on Sunday. Peterson Pot — Mistral, Lancaster Hole, County — Manchester Bypass all probed.

The forecast of SNOWPOCALYPSE put paid to our King Pot plans, as there would be no chance of getting out of Kingsdale. So we defaulted to Clapham, as it's a nice even drive to Greenclose and walked up into the Snowy Dales. Flood-Bar exchanged and the very muddy Jean Pot bottomed. Heavy snow on our return to the surface, and a careful snow-chained drive home. Sunday saw a photo-support trip to Hardrawkin, and a sump sampler session in Joint.

Short round and round! A bit of GB action, some Eastwater Cavern probing and the first trip of 2012 was a classic start to the caving season.

Cracking winter tour, we seemed to have the Dales to ourselves. The NPC was empty: we turned up at 2am, all was dark and we thought no one was there, but Dave and Tetley were, tucked up in their beds. The massive oven was put to good use churning out roast dinner after roast dinner. Weather was fairly kind for once, sub zero with snow on the first weekend (but still driveable), a fairly smooth thaw followed by warm foggy weather.

After the disasterous minibus behaviour of the weekend before, we had a free hire to spend! So why not take two buses to Derbyshire?

Ace weekend at the NPC. Attempted a Dis:Bar:Stream exchange on the Saturday, but Dis' duck was flooded, so became a successful Bar:Stream instead! Unfortunately, we returned to a dead Transit. Made it back to the NPC by shuttling in the cars, ate a fantastic curry, and spent the whole of Sunday faffing with the RAC on our merry way back to London.

Lovely little trip to the Llangattock escarpment, staying at the extremely comfortable Whitewalls cottage (CSS). Full frontal assault on Aggy (Ogof Agen Allwedd) breached both the boulder chokes and got everyone to North Western Junction, where the cooks left sedately, leaving the Turkey dreamers to meander upstream and inspec the formations, before slithering downstream down the impressive passage and then exiting. Excellent evening curry. Sunday saw more modest trips, to Eglwys Faen where a hippy-led Cello & multi instrumental concert was in full swing in the main chamber, and Ogof Pen Eryr which has retained its enjoyable corkscrew climb.

A new year, and a new crop of freshers to introduce to the delights of caving. Excellent weekend altogether: 3 Trips down OFD - Ed's Shortcut / Salubrious, Top Waterfall & Poached-egg climb / round about everywhere climb. A trip to the Neath valley for Sunday, Little Neath by the wetsuit glad, and a fistful of smaller caves (Town Train, Bridge, White Lady) and a bit of wild swimming outside for the others... Good times!

Welcome Team 2011!
Come find our stand in Beit Quad during Freshers Fayre (11AM-4PM, Tuesday 4th October), and have a chat to one of our club members.

We have an excellent Autumn calendar of trips organised, and plans are afoot for foreign trips during the various university holidays.

Since you're here, check out some of our massive website. Thinking big, you may be interested in this Easter's trip to Sardinia (Photos, PDF Report, our exploration project in Slovenia (2011 Updates, 2010 Photos, Dec 2009 Winter Recce Photos). Closer to home, our weekend trip reports may give you a sense of what to expect: typical non-rope freshers trip weekend, SRT Yorkshire Weekend and the kind of harder trip we do later in the year, once all you new guys & girls are trained up.

Jan's put together a great writeup of our recent lightweight trip to Hidden Earth, the yearly national caving conference.